Annual Report 2020-2021
From Our Director
When I sat down to write the Director’s Letter not quite a year ago, we had only two or three months earlier begun to experience the world-changing reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. Barnard’s campus closed, businesses were shuttered, theatres and museums and arts spaces and community organizations closed their doors to stem the spread of the virus. As the weeks and months unfolded after that initial systemic shock, all witnessed as the pandemic exacerbated existing inequities in our society to deadly effects. Hospitalizations and deaths grew at an incomprehensible rate, while the burden of serious illness and mortality fell disproportionately on Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities, and the economic, social, and psychic burdens of stay-at-home orders weighed most heavily on women––across economic classes but especially working-class women and essential workers, women of color, parents of young children, and caregivers in families. The pandemic intensified the precarity of many elders, incarcerated people, unhoused members of our communities, and migrants and undocumented people. As many experienced losses in the extreme, deaths of family members, friends, and members of extended communities, we also felt the losses of daily life, in-person interactions, ritual, communal, and casual experiences. We have all pivoted. We have sought to embody resilience. And still, I feel compelled to acknowledge the profundity of what the pandemic has extracted from us all.
As the COVID pandemic continues to devastate the world, so too does the relentless violence of racism and capitalist brutality. The murders of Black people at the hands of police, the surge of anti-Asian hate violence, recurring white supremacist mass shootings, the government’s deadly neglect in responding to the pandemic, and attacks on democratic institutions grounded in long legacies of authoritarianism and Jim Crow politics all coalesce into a situation of deep crisis for our society.
Everything we did at BCRW during the 2020-21 academic year sought to respond to the current situation by engaging the intellectual, political, and creative work of scholars, activists, and artists whose interventions and contributions help us analyze and critique what is, while imagining what could be. From book talks to teach-ins, from artists’ talks and musical performances to academic exchanges, from the Scholar & Feminist Online scholarly journal to videos featuring activists thinking through transformative justice and mutual aid projects, from cosponsored events to ongoing collaborations across the College and the University, we remained committed to intersectional feminist analysis and solidarity with individuals and communities most affected by the stresses and injustices of our current society.
As we worked to pull together this year’s annual report, I was astonished by how much we had managed to accomplish while still working remotely, still separated by the protocols of pandemic living, still absorbing the shocks and losses of the last year and more. I continue to be grateful beyond words for everyone who works at BCRW, the professional staff and the student research assistants, as well as our many collaborators and partners at Barnard and Columbia and beyond. Without their creativity, commitment, and labor, none of this work could have happened. Special gratitude–and congratulations!–to Eve Marie Kausch, BCRW’s post-baccalaureate fellow since February 2019. Eve departs BCRW at the end of June, heading west to graduate school in Library and Information Sciences. As much as we will miss Eve, we are delighted to welcome Sophie Kreitzberg (BC ’19) as our new post-baccalaureate fellow in June 2021.
What a year to celebrate it, and yet 2021 is BCRW’s 50th anniversary! Before the pandemic, we had planned a big in-person celebration of a half-century of the Center’s work. While such a celebration remains an aspiration, we close out this year with the launch of a digital exhibit of the Center’s first fifty years, a project led by Eve Marie Kausch (BC ‘18), BCRW’s post-baccalaureate fellow from 2019 to 2021, and Alex Volgyesi (BC ‘22), BCRW student research assistant. The exhibit has been the labor of many at BCRW, but special gratitude goes to Eve and Alex for their archival research, critical engagement, and production of the exhibit, which you can find on the BCRW website.
None of our work would be possible without the generosity of our supporters. Thanks to the many people who made gifts to BCRW in 2020-21, and please consider joining them in supporting the Center with a one-time or recurring donation. Visit bcrw.barnard.edu/donate or contact us for more information and ways to give.
Thank you for being part of BCRW’s extended community. We look forward to seeing you in person before too long.
With appreciation,
Elizabeth Castelli
BCRW Director and Professor of Religion, Barnard College